News Scan

U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Stay of Oklahoma Execution: The Associated Press reports the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld the stay of execution for Oklahoma killer Garry Allen, who was scheduled to be executed yesterday. A federal court ordered the stay Wednesday, and an appeals court approved the ruling Thursday. Oklahoma's attorney general then referred the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Allen was shot in the head by police responding to the crime scene after he fatally shot 24-year-old
Gail Titsworth in 1986. His attorney's argue he had a history of mental illness and the gunshot injury caused more impairment.

LAPD Makes Changes to Transgender Policies: CBS Los Angeles reports on the LAPD announcement that by the end of the month, arrested transgender men and women will be housed in a separate section of the Los Angeles Police Department's downtown Metropolitan Detention Center. The separate section will hold as many as 24 people. LAPD jail division commander Capt. Dave Lindsay also said the section's transgender detainees will have access to male or female clothes and medical care, including hormone treatments. Officers are also no longer allowed to pat down a transgendered person to determine their gender. Instead, Police Chief Charlie Beck said officers will have to rely on the person's clothing, language, or demeanor.

DNA Matches Lead to Arrests in Two Murders: The Associated Press reports DNA has linked an Indiana inmate to the rape and killing of a 19-year-old mother in Arkansas in 2000. Authorities plan to extradite Anthony Johnson to Arkansas, where he is expected to be charged with capital murder, rape, and kidnapping. The young mother had been raped, tortured, and strangled with a ligature. An initial match in a DNA database linked the slaying to 44-year-old Johnson, and officials in Indiana collected more DNA samples from him in prison. He was serving time for domestic battery, burglary, and intimidation in the beating of his girlfriend in Indiana. In Arizona, the Associated Press reports 45-year-old Raymond
Rivera will be extradited from California to Arizona to face a first-degree murder charge in the 1998 killing of 62-year-old Habib Raies. The victim was found bleeding to death from a single gunshot wound to the chest in Phoenix. The case went cold, but was reopened in 2009 when DNA evidence taken from a water bottle and bite marks on Raies was tested. Last month Rivera was arrested in the Los Angeles area on a felony burglary charge. His DNA was taken, and was matched to the DNA taken from the Raies case.